Saturday, July 10, 2010

Who Funds Don Berwick's foundation?And why did he not give that info to Senate Democrats?

H/T to Keithhennessey.com for calling attention to the fact that Dr. Donald Berwick did not reply to Senate Democrats questions regarding who funded his foundation, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).See here.

The mainstream medical organizations seem to have nothing but praise both for Dr. Berwick's work and his institute.

If you visit the IHI website you will not learn about who funds the organization.You will learn that the IHI has quite a few vice-presidents for what that is worth.

I have no reason to believe that their activities are anything but those representing a sincere effort to improve medical care although I freely admit that I have not spent much time analyzing or learning about exactly what they have done. But the question remains- why are the donors' name(s) not made public.

This commentary, from the American Spectator (AS) appears to have answered some of the questions regarding funding and raises the issue of the dread conflict of interest (COI) in regard to Berwick and the IHI.

I was impressed with how lucrative it is have Berwick's job at the IHI and how well a number of their vice-presidents are compensated. If the facts are as they are claimed to be in the AS article, it seems like we have once again validated the Mafia rule of "follow the money" because managed care organizations and insurance companies contribute to the IHI. Could it be they may well profit from research on quality which just happens to find that less care is better and/or that there is much overuse and misuse in medical care.

Here is a quote from the NHS speech Dr. Berwick delivered:

In the United States, these hundreds of insurance companies have a strong interest in not selling health insurance to people who are likely to need health care. Our insurance companies try to predict who will need care, and then to find ways to exclude them from coverage through underwriting and selective marketing. That increases their profits. Here, you know that that is not just crazy; it is immoral.

There is a interesting contrast here.Very critical remarks about the U.S.health insurance industry are made by someone who, according to the American Spectator Article, received 2.36 million annually since 2008 in compensation from an institute which is to a significant amount funded by health insurance companies.

Why are these companies paying someone so well to travel the world and bad mouth them?

All of this is really the dogs barking while the caravan moves on.Obama has in place a staunch single payer advocate. A single payer is becoming more will likely to happen sooner rather than later if the debacle with Masscare is a precursor of what will happen to the insurance industry with Obamacare.